t referring it; but the Senate was not prepared for such
haste, and on motion of Mr. Trumbull, the Bill was sent to the
Judiciary Committee. That Committee reported it without delay to the
Senate, with an amendment in the form of a substitute. The House bill
was a simple repeal in the fewest possible words. The Judiciary
Committee now proposed that instead of an absolute repeal, the
Tenure-of-office Act "be, and the same is, hereby suspended until the
next session of Congress."

This was a lame and impotent conclusion, and did not commend the
support or even the respect of the Senate. Mr. Thurman, a member of
the committee that reported it, made haste to announce that he had
not approved it. He treated the proposition for suspension as a
practical confession that the Tenure-of-office Act "is to be enforced
when it will have no practical effect, and is not to be enforced when
it would have practical effect." The chief defenders of the
proposition to suspend the Act were Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr.
Schurz. Mr. Edmunds, pressed by Mr. Grimes to furnish a good reason
for suspending the Act, replied that "owing to the peculiar
circumstances that have attended the last administration, it is
desirable that there should be an immediate and general removal of the
office-holders of the country as a rule; and as an agency of that
removal, subject to our approval when we meet again in confirmation
of their successors, these bad men being put out, we are willing to
trust this Executive with that discretion."

Coming from a senator of the United States, this declaration was
regarded as extraordinary. The "bad men" to whom Mr. Edmunds
referred were the appointees of President Johnson, and every one of
them had been confirmed by the Senate of the United States when the
Republicans had more than two-thirds of the body. If these appointees
were "bad men," why, it was pertinently and forcibly asked by the
aggrieved, did not Mr. Edmunds submit proof of that fact to his
Republican associates and procure their rejection? He knew, the
accused men declared, as much about their character when their names
were before the Senate, as he knew now when he sought, behind the
protection of his privilege, to brand them with infamy. To permit
them to be confirmed in the silence and confidence of an executive
session, and then in open Senate, when their places were wanted for
others, to describe them as "bad men," seemed to them a pro